Military brass will not accept primer

wayupnorth

wayupnorth

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Finally started reloading after collecting equiptment and brass for the last 15yrs and I ran into a small snag and have a quick question for the experienced people here.
I was putting some primers into some of my 308 brass and I noticed some of the brass I have will not accept the Large Rifle primers.
This brass is stuff I collected at the range when I was out there with the Rangers when we got those fancy new 308 rifles.
The primer hole looks like it has a extra band of brass that makes the hole just a bit to small to accept the primers.
Brass is IWI.
I had no issues with Norma or PMC or Winchester brass accepting the primers.
I’ll try to post a pic here in a sec.
Any help or direction on what to do would be great, I have a LOT of this brass and would like to use it.
 
Far left is the culprit

Pic
ADnHHg0.jpg
 
It is very common for military contract ammunition from many nations to feature crimped primers. Self-loading rifles and machine guns have a nasty habit of cases losing their primers on firing, these can fall into the action and jam things up.

The solution is to strike the edge of the primer pocket with a crimping tool that displaces a little bit of metal into the pocket, holding the primer tight. In addition to making re-priming difficult, it can make them very hard to deprime. As others have said, there are a variety of tools on the market to clean up the pocket.
 
Good Grief.

It's so simple, even I can do it.

Go to your local hardware store, purchase a $5 countersink bit, used for either metal or wood.

Take it home, put it into your battery operated drill and then, apply the countersink cutting edges while rotating of course, to the primer pockets until the crimp lip is removed.

You might screw up on the first few and take away to much or not enough. It's a very tiny learning curve.

That countersink bit is appx 1/3 the cost of a primer pocket hand swage tool and the unit from the hardware store will last for the rest of your life and maybe that of a few other people.

If you're handy, you can even grind an old drill bit to do the job.
 
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Your military crimped primer pocket is IVI, not IWI.
As others have said, the Dillon primer pocket swager is excellent (I've had mine since 1985) and the Lyman primer pocket reamer works great for small and infrequent quantities (I use that too).
 
FWIW there are also commercial primer pockets that are crimped (Federal 223 in the 1000 round box for ex) and S&B brass has no chamfer on the primer pocket which may cause re-priming issues as well. I found that out the hard way trying to run S&B 38 and 357 through my Dillon 550 and wondered why I kept squashing primers.

I used to swage them with a countersink bit as per bearhunter but my fingers sure got sore after doing 100's of rounds of the Federal 223.

Wound up buying a Dillon Swager - buy once, cry once. Depends on the amount of brass you need to process.
 
I ran into that more often in the past when milsurp was more common to come across - so typically 7.62 NATO and 5.56 NATO, but I understand maybe some older 303 British also had crimped primers - is sometimes a ring around the primer like you show, or sometimes some "punch" type marks - say 3 or four. I use an old RCBS tool - came with small primer and large primer size swages - takes a bit of fussing to set up in press, but works fine - is only done once to prep ex-military brass - good then, for life of the case. The tool that I use is likely older than our kids, and they are in their 40's now. Used with same shell holder that is used to size the brass in the press.

OP - you should note that is typical that some military brass is thicker wall and thicker head than commercial brass - so a "warm" loading in commercial brass, might be too much in military brass - is not always the case, but worth to know about. Pretty much a thing that you need to verify with the pieces that you have - so many makers and various specs - I think - can not reliably know about generality for all the time, for any particular brand or headstamp. They were made differently, from time to time or from place to place. I recently read that CCI makes the 17 HMR ammo for Hornady, that Norma makes the cases for Weatherby - so I imagine a few years ago or a few years from now will be a different suppliers - likely same head stamp but made in different place, by different tooling. Is nothing that I know about that says the four cases that you show have same volume on inside, even if you re-sized them so they will be same size on the outside.

I am likely too old and too "set in my ways" - but have never reloaded multiple brands at same time - my brass normally in "batches" - all the same - I feel that I need to re-do my loadings if I change brass - like changing primers, bullets, etc. - I do know some others do not bother with that. If you spend time to work up a "best" loading - not real obvious to me that you still have "best" if randomly changing out components - maybe for some uses, it does not matter. Maybe an "old guy" thing that has no more reason to it, other than is the way that I do it.

EDIT - multiple mistakes above - I no longer have the first RCBS tool - this one says "Primer Pocket Swager Tool - 2" on end of the box - RCBS P/N 9481 - likely thought I was done with milsurp brass - sold original tool - then came into more military brass to swage - got this newer version - does not use shell holders at all - everything needed to use on press, for both Large Rifle and Small Rifle size primers, seems to be in the box.
 
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bearhunter said:
Good Grief.

It's so simple, even I can do it.

Go to your local hardware store, purchase a $5 countersink bit, used for either metal or wood.

Take it home, put it into your battery operated drill and then, apply the countersink cutting edges while rotating of course, to the primer pockets until the crimp lip is removed.

You might screw up on the first few and take away to much or not enough. It's a very tiny learning curve.

That countersink bit is appx 1/3 the cost of a primer pocket hand swage tool and the unit from the hardware store will last for the rest of your life and maybe that of a few other people.

If you're handy, you can even grind an old drill bit to do the job.
Click to expand...

I started to use my bench top drill press for this. Takes a split second and super easy clean up, if any
 
Paul_T said:
FWIW there are also commercial primer pockets that are crimped (Federal 223 in the 1000 round box for ex) and S&B brass has no chamfer on the primer pocket which may cause re-priming issues as well. I found that out the hard way trying to run S&B 38 and 357 through my Dillon 550 and wondered why I kept squashing primers.

I used to swage them with a countersink bit as per bearhunter but my fingers sure got sore after doing 100's of rounds of the Federal 223.

Wound up buying a Dillon Swager - buy once, cry once. Depends on the amount of brass you need to process.
Click to expand...

I ran into some S&B 308 that was like that, its sitting in a storage bin now waiting till I get motivated to ream them out.
 
zuke said:
I started to use my bench top drill press for this. Takes a split second and super easy clean up, if any
Click to expand...

Yup, just keep in mind though that some people just love their "gadgets"

I run into the same thing with fly fisherman, special little tools to tie simple knots, stack hair, clip feathers etc. They will pay $12 for an ounce of fluffed yarn, instead of doing it by hand in ten minutes and getting enough end product to last a lifetime.
 
I reloaded a bunch of IVI 7.62x51 and it was very difficult to put through the die, and needed the pockets chamfered to accept primers.
 
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